Are you tired of conditions?

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Overall, I am not tired. It can be overdone - we once fought monsters that dominated (save ends), aftereffect dazed. That was tiring.

But usually, no. The only thing that is problematic is keeping in mind to apply your ongoing damage at the start of your turn and make a save at the end of the turn.

 

[Prestidigitalis]

Mesh Hong:

The difference is that the DM usually has several creatures to control, and I only have one. If my character is stunned, I get to take ongoing damage, make saving throws, and then say "Gosh, I guess I'm done."

Imagine just how much fun that is for a new player, or one who is already a bit disengaged from the day's session for one reason or another.

This is why a good DM is so important, and why these discussions are so useful. Props to the OP.

 

[Beckett]

Overall, I am not tired. It can be overdone - we once fought monsters that dominated (save ends), aftereffect dazed. That was tiring.

But usually, no. The only thing that is problematic is keeping in mind to apply your ongoing damage at the start of your turn and make a save at the end of the turn.

Yeah, I'm with you. I think conditions add more than they take away; without them, fights just turn into the PCs and the monsters pounding on each other until someone drops, with nothing mattering except the damage.

There are exceptions. Stun is my least favorite, as there's nothing the PC can do. The final fight in Thunderspire Labyrinth [sblock] where there's a device that has a very good chance of dazing PCs just about anywhere in the room[/sblock] was very frustrating. But mostly I see conditions as providing a little extra challenge for the PCs.

 

[Stalker0]

What's the alternate proposal to conditions, btw, bland damage?

From a PC standpoint, I think its important to have lots of things other than damage, gives them tactical choices and things to do. So I think allowing characters frequent access to conditions is good. Although I will admit, I still would prefer more powers that had no conditions and just allowed some massive damage.

On the flip side, maybe its me, but there's nothing bland about my character taking lots of damage and being near death. There is when I'm barely hurt but I can't act.

 

[FireLance]

Although I will admit, I still would prefer more powers that had no conditions and just allowed some massive damage.

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[Mesh Hong]

Mesh Hong:

The difference is that the DM usually has several creatures to control, and I only have one. If my character is stunned, I get to take ongoing damage, make saving throws, and then say "Gosh, I guess I'm done."

Imagine just how much fun that is for a new player, or one who is already a bit disengaged from the day's session for one reason or another.

This is why a good DM is so important, and why these discussions are so useful. Props to the OP.

Don't get me wrong, I completely agree that certain conditions should be used rarely or at least sparingly. The main culprits being:-

Stunned
Weakened
Dazed

The main point of my post was to highlight the fact that PCs usually pump out more debilitating conditions than the monsters, at least from my experience.

The main thrust of the original arguement was that it is not fun for a PC to be continually under debilitating conditions, remember that this can also be true for the DM. A player gets to use all his cool powers every adventuring day, a DM might only get one chance to use a creatures cool power. Again I suppose I am playing devils advocate but in order to maintain a balanced discussion I feel these are points that need airing.

Again I will state that it is a product of poor encounter design if multiple PCs spend most of their time under debilitating conditions. However if in an encounter only 1 PC spends most of their time under a debilitating condition this might indicate a player teamwork problem, i.e. why arn't the other PCs switching the creatures attention to them giving the debilitated PC a chance to recover?

A problem with this whole discussion is its generality. All we can really learn from it is:

Too many conditions reduce a player or DM's options, some going as far as to limit them to zero, reducing the fun factor for the person concerned. It can also cause frustration and extend the amount of time that the player or DM takes to consider and perform his turn, this will slow the pace of the game leading to more frustration and drag down the fun factor for everyone. This can be mitigated if required by reducing the amount of powerful debilitating effects in an encounter to one or two sources or to affect one or two PCs at a time.

 

[Prestidigitalis]

The main thrust of the original arguement was that it is not fun for a PC to be continually under debilitating conditions, remember that this can also be true for the DM. A player gets to use all his cool powers every adventuring day, a DM might only get one chance to use a creatures cool power. Again I suppose I am playing devils advocate but in order to maintain a balanced discussion I feel these are points that need airing.

I'm fine with devil's advocates -- some of my best friends are devil's advocates!

Again, though, I would raise the point that the DM has more options than the players. If the DM feels bad because debilitating conditions prevented use of a creature's cool powers, the DM has the option of using that creature again the next week, though, obviously, this may not work in some cases due to plot issues.

Unlike the players, the DM *does* have the option of fudging the results in order to achieve a desired end. Granted, the DM may feel this is unfair, but it could be argued that the use of the cool powers is good for the players, too -- it helps make the encounter more distinct, more memorable, and (probably) more challenging.

I think it's important to remember that there is a huge asymmetry between players and DM. The DM can *always* get what he or she wants. So long as the session is fun and doesn't end in a TPK, the means that the DM employs shouldn't really be much of an issue.

I could write more, but I have a tendency to slide into tl;dr territory anyway. Good discussion -- I'd love to see it continue.

 

[Mesh Hong]

Yes thats a good point, the DM has a lot more options than the players. I suppose it is worth noting that the DM is only bound by his own imagination and a loose set of guidlines for encounter/monster design.

Also the DM is free to occasionally reduce the effectiveness of certain PCs powers by designing opponents or situations where they are not as useful or have little effect.

I am going to ignore the fact that the DM can fudge dice rolls and force results one way or the other. (That is whole different discussion, I am going to assume an impartial DM)

I don't really see where the discussion can go from here. We all seem to be of the opinion that too many status effects are both annoying to track and reduce the players fun.

What we need is someone to say that there arn't enough status effects!

- actually I am currently messing around with effects that require multiple saves to end. I am sure that that might no go down well with some people in this thread

 

[Infiniti2000]

A player gets to use all his cool powers every adventuring day, a DM might only get one chance to use a creatures cool power.

This is true, but IMO the biggest design improvement in 4E is greatly reducing the time to build bad guys. In 3.5, I would spend many hours creating a single bad guy (be it monsters with classes, NPCs, or whatever) only to have them get punked in the first 20 minutes. That really sucked as DM. I wasted a whole lot of time. Now, however, it's way simpler and I spend very little time working on bad guys. Who cares if they use all their powers or not? It's no longer a huge waste of my time and if the PCs prevail super easily, more power to them!

So, all the conditions on bad guys aren't a concern to me at all. It's not frustrating and the players certainly help me track them so it's not even that difficult (we also use stackable, color-glass markers from a craft store).

Regarding conditions on PCs, yes, there are some debilitating ones but certainly not to the level of previous editions. What are your options as a fighter if you get power word stunned with not many hit points? In 4E, at least you get a save and could be given more saves by comrades before you even feel the effect of the stun! Frankly, even though we're still only playing at low levels in 4E, I don't see a huge problem though we're looking through the rose-colored glasses of previous editions.

 

[Prestidigitalis]

I am going to ignore the fact that the DM can fudge dice rolls and force results one way or the other. (That is whole different discussion, I am going to assume an impartial DM)

Hmmm. Is "DM doesn't fudge rolls" the same is "DM is impartial"? The term "impartial" is normally used in reference to a contest in which there are two opposing sides. But in a sense, there is only one side: the people at the table.

The characters and creatures only SEEM to oppose each other. In fact, they are allied in creating a story and bringing enjoyment to a happy little band of humans who get a kick out of seeing a 20 at the top of an icosahedral piece of plastic.

So I'm okay with it if the DM wants to fudge a few roles to make sure the cool stuff happens.